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I Finders in The Franklin Scandal di Nick Bryant
Passagi sui Finders da "The Franklin Scandal" di Nick Bryant. "While I was courting Anthony in the hopes of attending a black mass, I continued to troll the Internet for stories pertaining to Satanism. The Net was replete with stories of Satanists abducting children, and also of clandestine bonds between Satanists and the CIA. Given my inherent skepticism of conspiracies, I initially dismissed the tales. Eventually, I came across a number of stories about a cult called the “Finders” that weren’t rooted in fringe paranoia, but, according to the sources, in a US Customs report. The existence of tangible evidence intrigued me, and I phoned a “conspiracy theorist” who claimed to have the authentic US Customs report on the Finders. We spoke for maybe twenty minutes, and he discussed the Finders, the “Illuminati,” and a cavalcade of far-reaching speculation, convincing me that he wasn’t of sound mind. A week or so after our conversation, however, I did in fact receive a package from him that contained the US Customs report on the Finders and also a US News & World Report article on the Finders that quoted the report. The Customs report, written by Special Agent Ramon Martinez, recounted a sordid, horrific cluster of events. On February 4, 1987, a concerned citizen notified the Tallahassee Police Department—he had observed six white children, “poorly dressed, bruised, dirty, and behaving like wild animals,” in a Tallahassee park. The children were accompanied by two well-dressed white males driving a white 1979 Dodge van with Virginia plates. The Tallahassee police responded to the call and took the children and adults into custody. The adults refused to cooperate, and one produced a business card that stated he planned to exercise his Constitutional right to remain silent. Police officers noted that the children, whose ages ranged from three to six, could not adequately identify themselves or their custodians and were “unaware of the function and purpose of telephones, televisions, and toilets.” The children also said that they were not allowed to live indoors and were given food only as a reward. The Tallahassee police charged the two adults with felony child abuse, and they were held on a $100,000 bond. The children were placed in protective custody. Police officers found documents in the van that enabled them to tentatively identify the two adults and partially identify the children. They also found documents containing two Washington, DC addresses. The Tallahassee police suspected child pornography; they contacted the US Customs Service (USCS), which has a Child Pornography and Protection Unit. Shortly thereafter, Detective James Bradley of the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) contacted Special Agent Ramon Martinez of the USCS. Detective Bradley indicated that the Tallahassee arrests were probably linked to a case that he was investigating in the DC area, involving a “cult” called the Finders. An informant had told Bradley that the Finders operated various businesses out of a warehouse in DC and housed children at a second warehouse. “The information was specific in describing ‘blood rituals’ and sexual orgies involving children, and an as yet unsolved murder in which the Finders may be involved,” wrote Martinez in his report. Bradley told Martinez that the Tallahassee arrests of the two adults for child abuse were the critical mass he needed for warrants to search the two warehouses. And on February 6, the MPD, accompanied by the USCS, executed search warrants on the warehouses. Rummaging through the first warehouse, they found jars of feces and urine and also a room equipped with several computers and printers and a cache of documents. “Cursory examination of the documents revealed detailed instructions for obtaining children for unspecified purposes,” wrote Martinez. “The instructions included the impregnation of female members of … the Finders, purchasing children, trading, and kidnapping. There were telex messages using MCI account numbers between a computer terminal believed to be located in the same room, and others located across the country and in foreign locations. One such telex specifically ordered the purchase of two children in Hong Kong to be arranged through a contact in the Chinese Embassy.” The investigators also discovered documents that discussed “bank secrecy,” “hightech transfers,” “terrorism,” and “explosives.” To their astonishment, they even found a detailed summary of the events surrounding the arrests in Tallahassee the previous night and instructions that were broadcast via a computer network. The instructions advised the “participants” to move the “children” through different police jurisdictions, and “how to avoid police attention.” Martinez and the MPD officers also found a large collection of photographs. A number of the photos were of nude children, and one appeared to be a child “on display” in a way that accented the “child’s genitals.” An MPD officer then presented Martinez with a photo album. The album contained photos of adults and children dressed in white sheets slaughtering two goats. The photos portrayed the slaughter, disembowelment, skinning, and dismemberment of the goats by the children. The photos showed the removal of the male goat’s testes and the removal of “baby goats” from the female goat’s “womb,” and the presentation of a goat’s head to one of the children. “Not observed by me but related by an MPD officer were intelligence files on private families not related to the Finders,” Martinez continued in his report. “The process undertaken appears to be have been a systematic response to local newspaper advertisements for baby-sitters, tutors, etc. A member of the Finders would respond and gather as much information as possible about the habits, identity, occupation, etc., of the family. The use to which this information was to be put is still unknown. There was also a large amount of data collected on various child care organizations.” Approximately a month after the MPD executed the warrant, Agent Martinez set up an appointment with Detective Bradley to review the documents that had been seized at the two warehouses. His report stated that he was to meet with Bradley in early April. On April 2, 1987, Agent Martinez arrived at MPD headquarters at approximately 9:00 A.M., and he was in for a shock. Detective Bradley was unavailable, but he spoke to a “third party” who was willing to discuss the Finders only on a “strictly off the record basis.” “The individual further advised me of circumstances which indicated that the investigation into the activity of the Finders had become a CIA internal matter,” Agent Martinez concluded in his report. “The MPD report has been classified secret and was not available for review. I was advised that the FBI had withdrawn from the investigation several weeks prior and that the FBI Foreign Counter Intelligence Division had directed MPD not to advise the FBI Washington Field Office of anything that had transpired. No further information will be available. No further action will be taken.” Wow! After I finished reading the USCS report, Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” came to mind: “There’s something happenin’ here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” The USCS report certainly triggered a paradigm shift within me—I suddenly became willing to entertain ideas that I previously would have discarded with dismissive skepticism. Though I was intrigued by the USCS report, I attempted not to jump to conclusions —I’ve met many people over the years whose only aerobic regimen is jumping to conclusions. But I felt that the Finders definitely merited a LexisNexis search of all newspaper articles relating to the cult. I went online and collected over twenty articles on the Finders from a hodgepodge of daily newspapers, ranging from the New York Times and Washington Post to the Orange County Register. Almost all of the articles pertained to the investigations launched by the Tallahassee police, MPD, and USCS. The earliest articles discussed the Finders’ probable involvement in “Satanism,” and a spokesman for the Tallahassee police said that one of the children “showed signs of sexual abuse.” Moreover, an FBI spokesman announced that the Finders were being investigated for “the transportation of children across state lines for immoral purposes or kidnapping.” A February 10, 1987 article in the Washington Post reported on a news conference kicked off by MPD Chief Maurice Turner, Jr. This news conference occurred after the CIA intervention, and at it Chief Turner backpedaled with ferocity, rejecting allegations that the Finders were involved in satanic rituals or child abuse. The chief also elevated the Finders from a cult to a “communal group.” He neglected to mention that the Finders were a communal group that reportedly had an interest in “purchasing children, trading, and kidnapping,” and also an interest in “terrorism” and “explosives.” He omitted discussing the jars of feces and urine as well. Two days after Chief Turner’s press conference, an FBI spokesman said that their investigation of the Finders was “winding down,” because the Bureau hadn’t “uncovered any evidence of federal violations.” The two adult Finders taken into custody by Tallahassee police had their felony child-abuse charges reduced to misdemeanors. Six weeks later the abuse charges were dropped altogether, and the children were eventually returned to the Finders. That was seemingly the end of the Finders saga. But almost seven years later, the grisly USCS report was leaked to the media, because a cadre of Customs agents were aghast that law enforcement hadn’t followed up on the Finders. A December 27, 1993 US News & World Report article, “Through a Glass, Very Darkly: Cops, Spies and a Very Odd Investigation,” discussed the efforts of Democratic Representative Charlie Rose of North Carolina and Florida Representative Tom Lewis, a Republican, to expose the government’s ties to the Finders. “Could our own government have had something to do with this Finders organization and turned their backs on these children?” asked Representative Lewis in the article. “That’s what all the evidence points to. And there is a lot of evidence. I can tell you this: We’ve got a lot of people scrambling, and that wouldn’t be happening if there was nothing here.” The MPD declined to comment on the Finders to US News & World Report , but an anonymous investigator for the Tallahassee Police Department criticized the MPD’s handling of the matter: “They dropped this case like a hot rock.” The article also quoted “ranking officials” from the CIA who described accusations linking the CIA to the Finders as “hogwash.” The efforts of Representatives Rose and Lewis to hold a hearing on the Finders/CIA connection ultimately came to naught. My LexisNexis postmortem on the Finders and the subsequent US News article left me perplexed and whetted my curiosity. The LexisNexis articles provided me with the names of a dozen or so people enmeshed in the Finders saga, and I decided to start making phone calls. The first Washington Post article on the Finders interviewed a psychologist “who works with cult members.” In the article, the psychologist said that he had “tracked” the Finders for five years. I really wanted the skinny on the Finders, and the psychologist’s remarks had the academic perspective of a zoologist commenting on a rare species for a National Geographic documentary. I thought he could offer me deep, anthropologic insights into the Finders’ mating habits, rituals, and mores—so I called him first. Our conversation lasted all of five or six seconds. I said, “My name is Nick Bryant, and I’m a freelance writer researching the Finders,” and he stammered: “I don’t know what you’re talking about! N-n-n-o comment! N-n-n-o comment!” Click. The word “Finders” elicited such a negative response that I immediately thought of Pavlovian conditioning, à la A Clockwork Orange, or, perhaps, a threat to life or limb. I phoned the mother of a Finder: “No comment!” I phoned a former Finder: “No comment!” I phoned law enforcement: “No comment!” Freelance writing has largely immunized me to rejection: Being barraged by “No comment!” didn’t dent my resolve. But I found it nearly impossible to garner information about the Finders and why the CIA might quash an investigation into the group’s seemingly sinister activities.